Nugent: Thank guns for the freedoms we enjoy

More firearms laws won't stop massacres by thugs, criminals

Updated 7:50 pm, Thursday, May 2, 2013

Rocker and gun rights advocate Ted Nugent addressed a seminar at the National Rifle Association's 140th convention in Pittsburgh in 2011.

Rocker and gun rights advocate Ted Nugent addressed a seminar at the National Rifle Association's 140th convention in Pittsburgh in 2011.

Photo: Gene J. Puskar, STF

Nugent: Thank guns for the freedoms we enjoy

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The good guys are back in Houston to celebrate freedom.

Some 70,000 National Rifle Association members and other freedom enthusiasts are celebrating the NRA's 142nd annual meeting in your fair city that was named after another freedom enthusiast, Sam Houston.

Across Texas and beyond, guns represent freedom every bit as much as our other cherished rights and freedoms, such as our constitutional right to freedom of speech.

Without guns there would be no America, no Texas.

There would have been no "shot heard around the world" at Concord Bridge. We would still be subjects, not citizens with inalienable God-given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The Second Amendment was not written by our forefathers to protect hunting. It was written to ensure future generations of Americans had the means to protect themselves from tyranny.

There are myriad statements and references from our forefathers regarding their unambiguous support of the Second Amendment and the right of ordinary people having the means to keep and bear arms and to protect themselves.

One of the nation's oldest organizations, the NRA's sole purpose is to protect the Second Amendment. There are almost 5 million NRA members.

The NRA has been blamed, pilloried and scorned by bureaucrats, various media, organizations and individuals for the actions of psychotics who massacred innocent Americans in a Colorado theater and beautiful little children and their teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

Any number of laws and gun restrictions were violated by the murderous psychotics who committed these massacres.

With more than 20,000 local, state and federal gun laws in America, it is unreasonable to believe more gun restrictions would have prevented these massacres or any crimes for that matter. It is even more unreasonable and bizarre to place any blame on the NRA families for such offenses.

More gun laws are not the answer to quell the violence in America. Psychotics and thugs will always find weapons to commit mayhem and robbery. The only people who abide by laws are the law-abiding.

The NRA is committed to making America safer. We believe in locking up criminals who commit violent crimes and throwing away the key - not punishing law-abiding citizens for the actions of psychotics and street thugs.

We know that roughly 20 percent of criminals commit 80 percent of violent crimes. These varmints should be permanently removed from society. By just doing this, violent crime would plummet.

We believe that those teachers and administrators who want to carry concealed weapons in schools should be allowed to do so, as they are in Utah and South Dakota. Good people trained with firearms are an effective force against evil.

The president's gun violence commission headed up by Vice President Joe Biden was misguided and sadly off-target. Banning semi-automatic firearms, limiting magazine size and closing a nonexistent loophole would do nothing - nothing - to reduce violence in America. These measures were politically correct symbols over substance.

Fortunately, common sense prevailed and none of the president's anti-gun proposals was turned into public policy, yet the NRA was once again blamed by the president for the Senate failing to pass any of his bad and counterproductive policies.

Statistics say the majority of Americans, unlike the president, know that more gun laws and restrictions are not the answer.

If anything has come out of the president's nonsensical anti-gun attempts, it has been skyrocketing gun sales and hundreds of thousands of new NRA members. Ironically, President Obama has been the greatest gun salesman in the history of firearms.

I am stopped by friendly Americans and gun owners each day in my travels around the country. The message is largely the same: They don't trust the president and other bureaucrats who believe in restricting rights and not advancing and supporting individual freedoms.

On behalf of the NRA and the tens of thousands of members who join me at our annual convention here, please accept my thanks to the good citizens of Houston for your Texas hospitality.

The NRA represents the good guys and I am very proud to be one of them and proud to be a Texan.